Gov. Jerry Brown must now decide whether to sign into law a bill that would require mandatory vaccinations for nearly all California schoolchildren.

The measure, spawned by an outbreak of measles at Disneyland that ultimately infected more than 150 people, cleared its final legislative hurdle Monday in the state Senate. Brown has not said publicly whether he would sign it.

The measure — one of the toughest vaccination bills in the nation — would require children enrolling in school or day care to be immunized against diseases including measles and whooping cough.

Parents would no longer be able to cite personal or religious beliefs to decline the vaccinations, although children with certain medical problems, such as immune system deficiencies, would be exempt.

Those who decline the vaccinations would have to enroll their children in a home-based private school or public independent study program based off campus.

The bill was one of the most contentious taken up by the Legislature this year, attracting large, vocal crowds of parents during a series of legislative hearings on the measure.

To say it was contentious is an understatement. Indeed, as I’ve repeated—probably more times than regular readers want to hear—even in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak, I expected this bill to fail. I was more than pleasantly surprised as the bill cleared hurdle after hurdle despite all opposition and attempts to water it down to uselessness to the point of taking on an air of inevitability last week in the days leading up to the final vote in the state assembly last week that sent SB 277 to the governor’s desk. That’s great. But we can’t let up the pressure. As you might recall, when an earlier bill in California, AB 2109, was passed into law its intent was to make it more difficult to obtain non-medical exemptions was sabotaged by Governor Brown when he added a signing statement to it. That signing statement directed the California Department of Public Health to add a checkbox on the form for a religious exemption that basically permitted any parent who checked it to skip the Law’s requirement to obtain counseling from specified health care practitioners regarding the risks and benefits of vaccination before a non-medical exemption would be granted. There was no provision in the law for this, and Governor Brown’s action was a profound betrayal of the children of California. We hope he won’t do something like that again, but I sure as hell don’t trust him not to. So if you live in California, keep up the pressure. Certainly the antivaccinationists are. If SB 277 becomes law and California joins Mississippi and West Virginia as states that permit no non-medical exemptions, it will be a watershed. It might even be a turning point that persuades other states to pass similar laws.

It might be a watershed event, a turning point, in a different sort of way. Specifically, the antivaccine war against SB 277, for the first time that I can remember, resulted in the nastiness in the antivaccine movement to percolate up through the media noise to reach the attention of ordinary Americans, most of whom had no idea just how looney and nasty these people can be. Let’s just put it this way. Those of us who stand up for science with respect to vaccines and have been doing so for more than a brief period of time have all experienced varying degrees of vilification and even outright harassment. I myself have had antivaccine zealots contact my bosses at work on a number of occasions; on one occasion our old friend Jake Crosby wrote a post accusing me of an undisclosed conflict of interest and being in the pocket of big pharma, thus inspiring knuckle draggers from the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism to sent complaints to my dean, my cancer center director, and the board of directors at my university. While I must admit that their actions caused me considerable agita at the time, in the end I emerged with much less concern and fear over such attacks because I realized that my university values academic freedom, as do most universities. Of course, the same doesn’t apply to private companies, and people who work in industry or non-university settings can be basically screwed when antivaccine activists target them.

Evidence of this just appeared yesterday in an article in Jezebel by Anna Merlan entitled, Meet the New, Dangerous Fringe of the Anti-Vaccination Movement. Basically, it is about examples of antivaccine nastiness culled from the Anti-Vax Wall of Shame (AVWoS), a Facebook group that collects examples of the most outrageously stupid and/or nasty rhetoric from antivaccine activists on social media. The group exists to expose (and mock), things like what the Jezebel article describes, such as vile messages sent to a mother who belonged to AVWoS.

One thing I learned from the article as well is that there exists another Facebook page, Anti Vax Wall of Shame – The Fall of the Wall that is, apparently, the response of antivaccine activists to AVWoS. I took a few minutes to peruse this AVWoS mirror image and was rather puzzled. For one thing, unlike AVWoS, it wasn’t particularly funny, an it’s not just because of what side I’m on. Believe it or not, I can appreciate truly clever jabs directed at “my side,” even chuckle at them. There really wasn’t anything to chuckle at there that I saw. In fact, I agree with Merlan’s characterization:

Fall of the Wall tends to skew a little less snarky than the Wall of Shame, and a little weirder. It uses an image of someone in a Guy Fawkes mask, clearly taken from a screengrab of an Anonymous video, and makes some wild claims, including that the Anti-Vax Wall of Shame folks are cleverly infecting anti-vaccination activists with computer viruses embedded in photos and links.

According to pro-vaccination groups, other opponents of SB 277 resorted to harassment, threats, doxxing and nasty impersonation. The mother of the 11-year-old girl—who asked that her name and her daughter’s name be withheld to protect their privacy and safety—told Jezebel that she’s a frequent commenter on Anti-Vax Wall of Shame, and that her daughter was contacted after a Fall of the Wall commenter started combing through her own public Facebook photos.

“She made it clear she was going through my pictures, making remarks about my husband having AIDS and how ugly my children are,” the woman says. “That their teeth are rotting out and they look retarded.”

Next, she says, came the message to her daughter (she provided a screenshot of the message to Jezebel, saying that it came from a sock puppet account impersonating her sister, which has since been taken down). She’s not sure whether the intention was to frighten her child, make her angry, or just show that she could find the woman’s family, but in any case, she’s furious.

And:

One woman who’s testified in favor of the bill—who also asked not to be named, for fear of drawing more troll attention—said that photos of her, her husband and her baby have been tweeted by anti-vaxxers. The day after she spoke in favor of the bill at a public hearing, she saw groups on Facebook speculating that she was affiliated with Merck, the drug company.

“I went home and they’d started posting all my stuff to their Facebook group,” she says. “Things like, ‘She’s an investor paid by Merck. I’ve never met anybody from Merck in my entire life.’”

In an email sent to Jezebel in May, the same woman said the group also speculated about whether someone needed to call Child Protective Services on her.

“Today the anti-vaxxers were discussing calling CPS on me because they think I have ‘mental health problems,’’ she wrote. “They think if they file a case report someone will come to my house and discover that my son is in danger, and then I will leave them alone. They have no fucking boundaries.”

And:

But the doxxing, harassment, and unhinged Hitler comparisons have SB 277 supporters feeling frightened too. While Jezebel spoke with several supporters who said they’d been threatened, doxxed, harassed, or Twitter-mobbed by anti-vax groups, only [Dorit] Reiss and [Alison] Hagood, the Colorado professor, would allow us to use their names. Both women are tenured, and both of them said it’s made it easier for them to continue talking and writing about vaccines in the face of so much increasingly delusional opposition.

This is a phenomenon that is all too familiar to anyone opposing the antivaccine movement. As I said, people who have academic positions, like myself and these women, tend to be more resistant to these tactics at work. Indeed, to get an idea of how these people think, go no further than the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism this morning where Kent Heckenlively likens SB 277 to the Fugitive Slave Act. Yes, he actually went there:

Consider the slave-owning South prior to the American Civil War. A trickle of slaves, perhaps 1,000-5,000 were escaping each year (out of an estimated population of 3,000,000 slaves), beginning their lives in the North, and speaking freely of what they endured under the lash of their slave-masters.

The escaped slaves presented no existential threat to slavery. For those in the North who didn’t quite know what to think about slavery, they were allowed to continue to exist in their state of uncertainty. Maybe slavery was good, maybe it was bad, but it was something that happened someplace else. They were not a part of it.

But that wasn’t enough for the South. The escaped slaves drove them crazy. Just like the 1.5% of California schoolchildren who have a philosophical or religious exemption. You see, most doctors claim that even if you believe in the mythical concept of “herd immunity”, it’s somewhere around 90-93%. I’m not a math teacher, but even if you take 1.5% away from 100%, I calculate it at 98.5%. Check my math to see if I’ve got it right.

Later, Heckenlively writes:

The fact is, those parents with philosophical or religious exemptions drive people like Senator Richard Pan and his pharmaceutical cronies absolutely nuts, just like escaped slaves drove their Southern masters crazy. Many people credit the Fugitive Slave laws as hastening the start of the Civil War and the end of slavery. By the very act by with which they attempted to gain complete control, they created a destabilizing force which wiped then from the face of the earth.

That’s right. Heckenlively is so delusional that he thinks antivaccine parents can be compared to slaves and that SB 277 is like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Even more insulting, he seriously argues that the reason for the Fugitive Slave Act was that slave owners couldn’t let it go because the existence of fugitive slaves “drove them crazy” when the motivation was more financial. They viewed those slaves as property that they wanted returned, and the older version of the Fugitive Slave Act had been weakened by non-slave states basically ignoring it; so a more Draconian version was passed that penalized heavily penalized officials who did not arrest a suspected fugitive slave. In brief, escaping slaves cost the South money and was seen as a danger to the viability of slavery as an economic system because large numbers of slaves were escaping to the north and not being returned. Heckenlively is, as usual, full of victim complex; so it’s not surprising he would view himself and fellow antivaccinationists as slaves being persecuted by “pharma slavemasters.”

I’ve always said that antivaccine zealots are their own worst enemies. I know it. My regular readers know it. Those dedicated souls who’ve worked to get SB 277 passed in California know it. Another salutary effect of the passage of SB 277 is that the rest of the country is coming to know it as well. If other states follow California’s lead, the reaction will be the same, only in more parts of the country.

215 Comments

SB277 has certainly brought out the crazies among the anti-vaxxers. They are probably the second best thing to discourage people from joining the anti-vax ranks. The first best thing is sadly a serious outbreak of vaccine preventable disease.

If I was more charitable I’d say that this is an example of “He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster.” with antivaccionists fighting (imaginary) threat for so long that they lost sight of the original goals.

But I don’t feel charitable, so I will only say that I am disgusted that they could be so oblivious to tout their persecution complex at the same time as they are harrasing and visciously attacking people for disagreeing with them.

It’s a crying shame that there is no way to convincingly simulate the real opressive regime for them, Maybe, just maybe, having tasted a fraction of what people they martyrologically compare themselves to, would teach antivaxxers a thing or two.

The last few days have been very interesting over at the anti-vax camp….several FB Pages dedicated to the anti-vax cause have been ripped apart by internal fighting between pro and anti-gay factions.

It turns out, a significant portion of the anti-vax militia is also extremely anti-homosexual & they’ve been blasting the recent Supreme Court ruling. Of course, this has completely alienated the liberal wing of the anti-vax spectrum…..it has been pretty funny to watch them turn their vitriol on each other for a change.

It has always been true that the anti-vaccine movement is made up of (at least) discordant parts: The fundamentalist messing with nature group and the chemiculz are toxic eleventyone group. They do meet around the back of the bike sheds and become indistinguishable from each other.

Is there a conspiracy version of Godwin’s Law? If not, can we make one? I mean, most of the anti-vaccine wing-nuts have already Godwined themselves with their constant invoking of Hitler and the Holocaust, but it would be nice to have a version for the ones who don’t go that far. Something like “If your position must be supported by the existence of nation-wide or world-wide conspiracies, your arguments are invalid.”

I am surprised that Mao Zedong is on the poster of people who do not believe in “health choice”. According to one of your articles on SBM Mao Zedong helped synthesize TCM and attempted to integrate it into medicine. Is he then not a proponent of “health choice” and “health freedom”?

I don’t know, I have troubles putting “mandatory vaccination” in the same category as “forced sterilization” or “children kidnapping”.
Actually, I fail to see the “medicine” part for most of these awful acts. OK, sterilization or electroshock were condoned and done by physicians. Eugenics and euthanasia are borderline (one could invoke twisted science to justify mass murdering), although they are more about withholding medicine than forcing it upon people.
But for the others?

Let’s not go into semantics, although “mandatory” doesn’t exactly mean “guys in trenchcoat breaking your door and sending you to the gulag”.

“covert population control via vaccines”
I would be very interested to learn which one of the angry guys on the poster managed to do something like this.

They should have put something about chemtrails and alien abductions. Eh, that’s “mandatory medicine”, too, going by their loose definition.

————————
Re: antivaxers’ sense of measure.

Went over at jezabel’s post, to get the full story about the facebook ID theft which resulted in an 11-year old girl getting a hate message.

You, know, dudes and dudettes, in a conflict, the ones attacking children aren’t usually the good guys.

And no, insisting that your spoiled brats get vaccinated before being allowed to school is not the same. Unlike some antivax loons, we are not invading other people’s letterbox with things meant to do harm.
If we wanted to speak about goons in trenchcoat breaking other people’s doors, right now they seem to be among the antivax side…

[Fall of the Wall] makes some wild claims, including that the Anti-Vax Wall of Shame folks are cleverly infecting anti-vaccination activists with computer viruses embedded in photos and links.

Wait, what? I know conspiracy theories defy what normal people would call logic, but usually they have an obvious central point: some people are not satisfied with the “official” explanation for some event (e.g., the Moon landing, or the collapse of the WTC towers on 9/11) and feel that they have to come up with some alternative explanation. I’m not seeing such a central point for this conspiracy theory. Are they so convinced of their rightness that they have to come up with a theory like this to explain why they lost this legislative battle? That’s thin gruel, even for a conspiracy theory. These people have managed the dubious feat of making the OMG-Obama-is-coming-for-our-guns-eleventyone crowd look sane.

I don’t get the “computer viruses embedded in photos and links” theory at all.
After all, given the main public of the group, wouldn’t they risk alienating the vast majority of their pro-vax suscribers if they really did that ? It’s not as if computer virus can magically check if they are infecting a pro or anti-vax computer.

Oh, LouV, you big silly. Don’t you know that computer viruses can be programmed to attack only those computers of people you don’t like?

Lord Draconis is always on the cutting (literally….) edge of technology. Haven’t you noticed that AOA is posting really silly stuff lately? Our viruses don’t hurt the computers, they crawl out through the mouse or keyboard invisibly and infest anti-vaxxers brains, making them post things that people realize are ridiculous and want nothing to do with them.

#3 Lawrence
Anti-vaxers sound like the psychologist, Bob Altemeyer, calls Right-Wing Authoritarian Followers, (RWAs) (The right-wing is something of a misnomer. I think Bob conceived the name early in his research program and was stuck with it.)

Most RWAs are not very logical, highly conspiracy-prone and tend to be very rigid in their attitudes. Bob reports that you can get some (all?) of them to believe two completely opposite conspiracy theories at once. Well probably 4 or 5 🙂 You would expect them to be crank magnets too.

You might want to have a look at Chapter 3 “How Authoritarian Followers Think” in Bob’s book The Authoritarians, http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf and see if it describes anyone you know. Personally I find that it describes anti-vaxers and climate change deniers perfectly and looks like it would cover the ant-gay brigade equally well since there seems to be a high tendency to belong to very fundamentalist religions as well.

If you want to scare yourself look at Chapter 5 “Authoritarian Leaders”

BTW, it is a somewhat annoyingly laid-out book, self-published and Bob uses a lot of footnotes—something a psychologist should not do IMHO. I, finally, started to use two pdf readers one for the main text and one for the footnotes

There’s another aspect our Gracious Host did not touch on — the infighting among the opposition to SB277. Last week, PaTimmy Bolen reported:

Worse, though, is what is happening in the “No on SB277” ranks. The last SB277 hearing, in front of the Assembly Health Committee, almost ended in a fistfight, so to speak, among “No on SB277” groups. There was, without doubt, a nose-to-nose confrontation over who was to speak to the Assembly Health Committee, with one arrogant Health Choice/Canary Party (HC/CP) twit [1] actually reaching over to turn off a scheduled speaker’s [2] microphone so that one of their own namby-pamby no-message barfers [3] could re-deliver the “We know that vaccines are safe and effective (sniff, sniff) – all we want is personal choice (whimper-whimper).”

The Health Choice/Canary Party faction, despite MASSIVE SUSPICIOUS funding from outside sources, is steadily losing support from the twenty thousand California activists on the ground. Why? Their controlled message does not resonate, neither with the ground troops on the “No on SB277” effort – and certainly not with the Democratic Party controlled legislature. They have lost every battle.

PaTimmy goes on to insinuate that the Canary Party/Health Choice operatives are actually secret agents of a sort for “the man” — in this case, proponents of public health and those who believe that autism is a natural variation in the human condition.

For those unwilling to despoil their boots by wading into Heckenlively’s bubbling morass of over-ripened verbiage, here are his first lines:

“Nothing leads evil to its own destruction quicker (sic) than its apparent success. It’s how G-d leads the wicked to their demise”.

This apocalyptic, self-aggrandising swill is of course familiar to those of us who have read his recent forays comparing his fellow travellers to super heroes, ‘supernatural detectives’ and Tolkien-based freedom fighters.

Thus we have nouveau riche tribal warrior moms and Kent, the Half-elven Christian Lord of California, battling the entrenched powers-that-be, be they the Crown, Sauron or the Devil. I think that these people spend WAY too much time in fantasy and reading young adult pulp fiction and it shows in their approaches in viewing the world- politically, socially or scientifically. They immerse their adult daily life experience in a wash of fairy tale in order to paitn themselves in a heroic mode but it just makes them sound like pre-teens who haven’t settled upon an identity yet- which is alright if you’re 12 but these people aren’t 12.

Last autumn, Pat Timmy wrote about strife within the movement:
it seems that all of the regulars met up ( Blaxill, Larson, Loe Fisher, Barry Segal et al) – remember he, Pat Tim, wanted to form an alliance between them and conquer the world or something. HOWEVER it seems that this year’s AutismOne had greater influence from the Segals and litte to none from AoA/ Canary Party/ Helath Chocie except for Kent and a few who are TMs.

I learned there is one more unwritten rule at AVWoS.You can say what you will about antivaxers,but you can’t say anything too critical about how bad autism can be.A detailed rant about how much autism sucks,and that autism can be a serious birth defect,is enough to get you banned from AVWoS.Even if you do not mention anybody by name.This happened to me.

Those of us who are provavccine,but are also believe in cures and treatment for autism,as a serious inborn disorder,may make up a large percentage of autism researchers,but among the public at large,expressing such views is not very popular.Only families and individuals who have experienced the worst about autism seem to get this.

What I want to know is whether the anti-vaxxers were scumbags all along or once, a long, long time ago might have passed for decent people. At this point, if one of my friends or acquaintances says something that sounds like an anti-vax trope or goes gluten-free, I’m dropping them like a hot potato. I don’t want to hang out with a scumbag.

Frankly, I don’t see why we can’t just make them happy. Withdraw all vaccines and medical practitioners from the anti-vax hotspots, and wait. Even though anti-vax parents dislike their children heartily, they might wince at losing medical coverage for themselves.

To me, this rings more of keeping the cult pure of outside influence. Make your followers scared to even look at anything provided by the pro-vaccination/pro-science/pro-reality side of things. It separates them from conflicting information, making their only source the anti-vaccine folks.

[email protected] 13
I,and others,have been arguing with a very stubborn internet troll,for well over a decade who holds this very belief.For years it was at various Blogspot blogs,but more recently it was at Richard Pan’s Facebook page,where he was a heavy poster.

This man also believes all autism is mercury poisoning.That anybody who does not use Andy Cutler chelation to “cure” autism is a heretic.He has come up with all sorts of crazy theories as to why kids are still being exposed to mercury,after thimersol was removed from vaccines.

If I were to tell you he shares the same last name as the original drummer for The Beatles,many of you would know just who I mean.

Sebastian Jackson: I think the ableist rhetoric helps tip them over into the crackpot territory. Most of the anti-vaxxers were highflying career women who expected a perfect baby, a quick return to ‘real life’ and a kid who earned all the prizes and caused all the other moms to be green with envy- did I mention that most of these people are total drama queens? Instead, they slowly go insane in suburbia, hating every day they spend with their child and turning that wrath on anyone they can. It’s no coincidence that the anti-vax movement is led by (sadly) mostly women, with a few token doormat dads and charismatic con-artist ‘doctors.’ Fathers are not judged by the ‘performance’ of their offspring the way mothers are, therefore most of them either indulge the wives, or absent themselves by developing workaholism or just plain leave. A small percentage doom the marriage by trying to be the ‘voice of reason.’
(I’m not sure how Olmsted fits in, as I’m not sure he’s the biological parent, and generally the GLBT population doesn’t indulge in the parental oneupmanship that the het population plays. I think he’s just in it for the money and to indulge his self-loathing.)

The anti-vax websites I follow, like the web woo-meisters, continuously heap derision upon the ‘mainstream media’, providing examples of how corrupt and compromised it is.
They especially hate television, probably because they now get very little coverage.

Usually, they discuss past incidents where the media was wrong , even if they have to go back decades. Alt media and new media are cited as the future: remember that their sources are often from Natural News, facebook pages, you-tube and similar holes of unmitigated nonsensical promotion for lame brain theories and far-etched cure-all supplement companies.

Anti-vaxxers are so sure of their own so-called news and information, that many are aspiring reporters or at work, deliriously concocting book length treatises, exposes and novels that broadcast their viewpoint. published by Skyhorse.

I think that Olmsted is there because they pay him; possibly in his earlier days as a reporter at that place ((shudder)), perhaps he thought that he would break a big story and win prizes or suchlike.
Interestingly, He’s scoffed at real reporters and those who win journalism prizes.

It’s not as if computer virus can magically check if they are infecting a pro or anti-vax computer.

At the risk of getting too OT, you’re thinking of a computer worm not a virus. There are certainly targeted malware campaigns similar to what the AVers imagine happened to them. Usually they target banks, corporations, governments, etc but I’d the AVers think they are as high value targets as those are.

RE: viruses in images
They don’t quite work how they I imagine AVers are saying. There’s not really virus that can execute code by viewing an image, it’s something else (i.e. javascript) that decodes something hidden in the image and executes it. IIRC, there’s been some proof of concept attacks that get jpegs to execute code but they rely on vulnerabilities in specific jpeg libraries that have been patched.

The anti-vax websites I follow, like the web woo-meisters, continuously heap derision upon the ‘mainstream media’, providing examples of how corrupt and compromised it is.

On this point they aren’t that far wrong. Too often, news coverage by mainstream media can be summarized as “Opinions Differ Regarding Shape of Earth”. Of course they go wrong in their prescription of what to do about this. Their reaction leads to epistemic closure, which means that nobody in their trusted circle dares to point out that the poster shown at the top of this post might not be such a good idea. A better approach is to view sources with skepticism, even the ones that seem to support your view of the topic.

[email protected] mentions the work of Altemeyer on right-wing authoritarians. It’s an apt analogy. There are certainly people with left-wing views among the anti-vaxers (*cough* Bill Maher *cough*), and there are undoubtedly some left-wing authoritarians out there. But the people who tend to fall for such ideologies seem to be disposed to right-wing ideologies much more than left. Even when they seem to be copying tactics pioneered by groups or governments that are associated with the political left. There are several organizations (mostly but not all political in nature) that have earned the description Orwellian because they seem to regard 1984 as an operations manual.

Specifically, the antivaccine war against SB 277, for the first time that I can remember, resulted in the nastiness in the antivaccine movement to percolate up through the media noise to reach the attention of ordinary Americans, most of whom had no idea just how looney and nasty these people can be.

Yes, having the insanity bubbling away at the anti-vax core bursting into public view is all too the good.

And though I have nothing to back this up, I suspect that there may be a number of anti-vaxers who have never visited any of the more virulent anti-vax sites and as such may not have realized “just how looney and nasty” some of their peers and anti-vax bigwigs actually are.

And how empty the underpinnings of the anti-vax movement actually are.

As concerns the “looney and nasty” stuff though, anti-vaxers are likely to claim that some pro-vaxers are guilty of the same behavior, so it’s just a tit for tat thing.

One obvious, and oft-repeated, lesson from this post is that the average person should be careful how much personal info they put on on the web, haven for crazies that it is.

“I’m not a math teacher, but even if you take 1.5% away from 100%, I calculate it at 98.5%. Check my math to see if I’ve got it right.”

Unlike Mr. Heckenlively, I was trained in science. One of us has the background to effectively teach the subject, and sadly it’s not the one who has chosen the profession.

1.5% is a very significant fraction of the 5-10% unvaccinated needed to break herd immunity.

I also have a firm enough grasp of Jr. High science to understand that the concept of herd immunity is not “mythical”

While Mr. Heckenlively has been demonstrating his inability to understand science (the subject he is employed to teach), his inability to understand how to draw a legitimate analogy (something an ex attorney should be able to do), the disability community in Cailifornia has been fighting a losing battle to actually accomplish something that would help his family–restore funding to the budget for disability services.

The anti-vaccine movement is the worst thing to happen to the autism community. And this is just one example.

@Michael J. Dochniak – who were the provaccine activists who targeted you? I personally object to people calling one’s employer to tattle about things one did on one’s own time that don’t affect their employer’s security or reputation.

“I’m not a math teacher, but even if you take 1.5% away from 100%, I calculate it at 98.5%. Check my math to see if I’ve got it right.”
Even if he had only completed a 6th grade education(US), he should be able to subtract fractions and understand percentages.

I live in Canada and we are in the run-up to a Federal election. The governing Conservative Party, (fondly known as the Cons among many non-Cons) who have formed the government [Administration in US terms] for 10 years managed to pull off something very similar to the poster under discussion here. If you google Isis conservative Trudeau advert you will get links to a Cons attack ads using video of ISIS executions as part of an attack on Justin Trudeau, leader of one of the other parties, the Liberals.

It’s not worth explaining the rest of a rather complicated situation here but it was a faux pas of massive proportions. I will say that the normal Con voter is not a nutjob, well probably not, like the anti-vaxers.

But Eric, they go ( even more) crazy when the media reports SB findings- they *enjoy* and support the “Opinions vary” ones.
They would be thrilled is AJW was described as an autism researcher who doesn’t concur with consensus rather than a major fraud and charlatan.

Is it just me, or does that image of Benito Mussolini in the antivax poster look a lot like Curly Howard?

We actually have a surgeon at our hospital who alarmingly resembles Curly, to the point where I am afraid that he will respond to an unexpected frozen section diagnosis over the intercom with “Oh…wise guy??!?! Wub-wub-wub-wub-wub-wub-wub!”

Of course, this will likely raise the craziness to even higher levels.

IIRC, Toni Bark has foretold that it will unleash the legal Kraken. Strangely, none of them have figured out where California’s constitutional right to education comes from yet. Hint: not the California constitution.

[…] remove non-medical exemptions to vaccination requirements for children in the state. Despite often vicious and irrational opposition, science and reason and public health have won the day! The bill passed all committees and both […]

It’s not as if computer virus can magically check if they are infecting a pro or anti-vax computer.

Actually, while it’s not magic, and while I fully expect that their photo virus worry is as bunk as everything else they’re claiming, you *can* make a virus check if it is infecting the correct computer before deploying its payload. The key lies in accurately characterizing your target environment, and then writing the virus to test for that. Even better if you can find a way of excluding non-targets.

Probably the most famous (and sophisticate) example of this sort of behavior is the Stuxnet worm, which had an almost eerie ability to seek out computers connected to Iranian centrifuges used for the enrichment of uranium. (Yeah, you can guess who probably wrote that one.)

SB277 has passed. The pro-choice party has just told its citizens that choice ends at birth. The pro-life party has just told its citizens that protecting life ends at birth. The rich will get back alley exemptions. You think Hollywood and Marin County and Malibu Moms are going to roll up their kids’ sleeves?

Probably the most famous (and sophisticate) example of this sort of behavior is the Stuxnet worm, which had an almost eerie ability to seek out computers connected to Iranian centrifuges used for the enrichment of uranium.

This was almost certainly a function of where it was injected and network connectivity. It’s an equal-opportunity device otherwise.

Of course they won’t provide a different currency: the U.S. constitution specifically forbids the states from creating their own currency. In the meantime, you can get used to money you disagree with: I’ve had to deal with the “in God we trust” bit all my life.

The rich will get back alley exemptions. You think Hollywood and Marin County and Malibu Moms are going to roll up their kids’ sleeves?

I’m afraid they might be right there; the bill seems to give doctors a fair amount of discretion in writing medical exemptions. Of course, the sufficiently motivated will find a way around any law, but given that just making getting an exemption more difficult than checking a box reduces exemptions by over half, I’m hopeful that SB277 will raise herd immunity enough to make up for the inevitable scofflaws.

How many times does it have to be explained to these nut cases that freedom from religion is a necessary condition for freedom of religion? You can still oppose vaccination on religious grounds, if you so choose. You do not have the right to endanger other people’s kids because of your religious beliefs.

Next, she says, came the message to her daughter (she provided a screenshot of the message to Jezebel, saying that it came from a sock puppet account impersonating her sister, which has since been taken down). She’s not sure whether the intention was to frighten her child, make her angry, or just show that she could find the woman’s family, but in any case, she’s furious.

Having been on the wrong side of rabid anti-vaxers before, I can tell you that behavior is sadly typical. No shame.

Ah, Patty Bolen. Remember when the “Maryland Board of Physicians [was] DEAD MEAT“? Now he’s down to babbling about some penny-ante tort that doesn’t even appear on the Maryland courts site and “HUGE VICTORY.”

Matt Carey @ 40, “1.5% is a very significant fraction of the 5-10% unvaccinated needed to break herd immunity.”
Another consideration is the fact that this is not 1.5% distributed evenly throughout California, but in ” pockets of woo”, Orange County being the most obvious example. This means that 1.5% in the smaller local population is going to actually be closer to the 5% required to compromise herd immunity. Yeah, math isn’t Heck’s friend…….

Lilady would indeed be pleased- children in California are no longer in danger of being exposed to vaccine preventable diseases in their classrooms, because the parents of the vectors wrongly believed that rubber causes autism, which they read in a vanity published book by a non-doctor who cannot differentiate an asthma attack from an allergy.

Lilady would indeed be pleased- children in California are no longer in danger of being exposed to vaccine preventable diseases in their classrooms, because the parents of the vectors wrongly believed that rubber causes autism, which they read in a vanity published book by a non-doctor who cannot differentiate an asthma attack from an allergy, relying on a wrongly interpreted personal anecdote.

Lilady would indeed be pleased- children in California are no longer in danger of being exposed to vaccine preventable diseases in their classrooms, because the parents of the vectors wrongly believed that rubber causes autism, which they read in a vanity published book by a non-doctor who cannot differentiate an asthma attack from an allergy, relying on a wrongly interpreted personal anecdote.

Now I wouldn’t want to make you upset- you seem a fine fellow- BUT
IIRC AoA’s Dan Olmsted resides in your town. He recently wrote about visiting Washington by Uber because Atkisson had a book party in a mansion ( a few months back).

You have my condolences. Hope you don’t run into him in the food market or at the auto repair shop. That would ruin my day entirely.

Oops. Well, at least I knew it was not near Illinois. I assumed Denise knew where it was.

I am just so glad he is not in our Washington. The bigger and wacky one out west which was supposed to be the Columbia Territory until a 19th century member of the US Congress changed it to honor the first president.

Which was probably for the best, because it is confusing enough that we have a city called “Vancouver” that gets confused with an island and bigger city north of the border. Many years we were lost looking for a hotel in Vancouver, WA and I had to explain to the not-so-helpful guy that we were not in Canada.

I can’t imagine what it would be like if there was a Vancouver, Columbia and Vancouver, British Columbia.

By the way, I have seen folks use very interesting definitions of “Metro.” Almost twenty years ago when we first got a phone modem I participated on a couple of disability forums on our ISP.

One woman who listed she was in “Seattle” was complaining bitterly about the deaf ed. preschool program that her son attended. Since my son went to the special ed. program across the hallway from the only public deaf ed program preschool in Seattle, I explained I had not seen anything like that nor heard anything from the parents of kids who went there.

She then explained she was actually in a town that is over two hours and several counties away.

Who knows what kind of “Metro” definition Olmsted is using considering his confusion over autism versus mercury, and not being able to find the Clinic for Special Children in Lancaster, PA. Perhaps the Washington, DC metro area extends through several state borders!

I scrolled down Dan’s posts @ AoA *et voila*!
in “Signs f the Times’ ( May 30, 2015) he discusses his annual trip back to Illinois ( I guess he lived there) AND
in “Sharyl Atkisson Gets it Right’ ( Nov 08, 2014) he discusses his Uber ride from Fall’s Church to Washington.

For some reason, I mis-recalled that as Lynchburg. They’re not even close: I guess its all one big, Virginian suburban heap of towns to me.

Time for plan B. What are the rules for coop home schools? I guess Californians had better plan and implement as many as possible to make it possible for working parents to leave their children in them. I hope as many as possible will boycott the fascist public school system, and that those for whom it is practical to leave California will do so. And educate parents on vaccine damage so they’ll recognize it when it happens to their children, and to support as many as possible bringing lawsuit, maybe in group actions, for every child who reacts after being forced to get the vaccines. Public demonstrations everywhere in protest. Maybe like Pegida, have one every week for as long as possible. Recall the bastards who did this, make sure they never hold public office again. I’m very sorry, California.

Where do you think they can go? One or two AoA reader mused about Seattle and Portland. Someone here speculated Idaho.

I think the worst cast scenario is that they move to Central America, where there are no regulations on quack treatments. One of the archbishops in the MMS church recently announced he was moving to Ecuador after they passed a radical asylum law.

Sebastian @ 106: Central American countries generally have pretty good vaccination rates (as long as they have stable governments). That’s probably because there are a few more unpleasant diseases to choose from down south.

In South America they could have to deal with malaria, yellow fever, dengue, VEE, and all kind of other horrible things. They’d be back to the US in a heartbeat.

I really, really don’t want (more) anti-vaxx people in Seattle. There are several religious schools in the city with 50% vaccination rates.

I would say they could go to Portland and live in a fluoride-free ‘paradise’, but my parents live in Portland and I don’t want to have to deal with quarantines.

They are now talking about getting the law repealed through a referendum.

Are they going to find enough signatures to get this on the ballot in the first place? Possible I suppose, because you only need 5% of the number that voted in the last election. Even then, I would be surprised if there was that many voters who cared enough about the horrors of mandatory vaccination. But getting the ballot measure passed?

They really are deluded if they think they have that much support among the public. It is far easier to persuade a few politicians if you shout loudly enough than it is to persuade a majority of people.

Roger Kulp: “Now that SB277 is law,what are the chances of Washington,Oregon,or any other state passing a similar law?”

There was an attempt in Olympia, but some other legislative priorities got in the way. Hopefully they will pass a state budget so state services do not stop tomorrow.

Depending on disease outbreaks, it may happen again in the next legislative session. I don’t really trust one of my representatives. The guy freaked when he found out an old building on a former Navy base was used to paint radium paint on aircraft instrument displays (back when they had propellers). Even though there is no detectable reading he insists on getting it “cleaned up.” Science does not seem to be his strong point.

A while back, Mikey was trying to get those who protested medical fascism ( e.g. vaccines, psychiatricic meds) to move with him to Ecuador where health freedom reigns ( as do tropical diseases, as Justatech mentions above)
HOWEVER he moved back to the US and its dictatorship: the other woo-meister claims that a well-known alt med expert had to leave his edenic abode because of kidnapping threats. So much for freedom from governmental intervention.

@Sebastian Jackson: The bill covers “any private or public elementary or secondary school, child care center, day nursery, nursery school, family day care home, or development center,” – s. 120335 (b) of California’s Health and Safety Code. I think that would include coop schools.

Per exchange on Twitter betwen Orac and Dr Jay, looks like the state medical board needs to be ready to look into quacks with a high rate of exemptions. Whiny worries about “thimerosol” are not a valid basis for a medical exemption it is a basis for referal to cognitive therapy and perhaps benzodiazapines for Momma.

“Age of Autism” is sharing this story from Anissa M on their Facebook page and think it’s hilarious. The comments are full of “LOL’s” and “OH SNAP’s.” Apparently this is what passes for humor and discourse with them now.

A woman accused my unvaxxed children of spreading measles and polio and killing other kids even though they don’t have any of these diseases. My solution?

I called her husband and told him he needs to be tested for gonorrhea because his wife may have given it to him. He calls her, flips out, accuses her of cheating. She repeatedly says, “I didn’t give you gonorrhea, I didn’t give you gonorrhea! How could I possibly give you gonorrhea if I don’t even have it!?” Checkmate.

@JustaTech #95
Well, they could build one of those super yachts and have supplies air dropped to them. Then they’d be just about as isolated as they could be and still be on earth. Then again, they are looking for volunteers to try to colonize Mars…

@Chris #104
I have a colleague who is from Portland and I have family up in BC. Whenever we start talking about something in Vancouver one of us stops the other and asks “North or South?”

Kind of tangential but a while back my former roommates friend came up for a visit, and we were having trouble finding her flight’s arrival time at SeaTac. It turns out her flight wasn’t going to Seattle, it was going to Portland. She managed to get her flight switched at the last second, but I joked that we were lucky she picked the Portland on the right side of the country. If she’d gone to Maine I’d have known she was a lost cause.

Sebastian [email protected]
I always look at that kind of behavior and wonder what twisted sense of morals makes them think they are in the right. If someone on the pro-science side did that I would tell them to cut that sh!t out because it makes us all look bad. It reminds of some show (the Americans maybe) where these people killed an old woman because she saw something and she said “generally the people killing old ladies are the bad guys.” To which they reply, “it’s necessary for the greater good” and she says “that’s what all villians tell themselves” or something along those lines.

Sian Williams: “@Chris #104
I have a colleague who is from Portland and I have family up in BC. Whenever we start talking about something in Vancouver one of us stops the other and asks “North or South?””

Same here. Daughter has a friend in the one in the south, and we all have relatives in the north (mostly the island… though a few in the ‘burbs of the city).

Speaking of the burbs of the city; for a while one relative lived in Richmond not far where they film the TV program “Once Upon a Time)). On a listserv for my son’s disability someone mentioned she was looking for help in “Richmond.” She did not give a state or province. I asked her if she meant the one in California or British Columbia, the two I knew of. It turned out to be Virginia. How was I supposed to know that?

(by the way the only ones who get to mock my geography knowledge better know where Mt. St. Helens is located… not like someone on the SGU podcast that put in the wrong state (I know I heard it recently, but I can’t find it now! Their transcripts are not comprehensive. Though I also have vivid memories of the New York Times putting it in the wrong state thirty five years ago!).

Narad: “I haven’t checked in a long while, but I think PDX–SEA used to be a valid routing, for mileage/segment* enthusiasts.”

Only if you like going driving three hours to get where you actually want to be. Seriously, on the east coast that could get you across several state lines, and both Oregon and Washington are two of the smaller western states. Try telling us that DEN-SLC are the same place. The states are next to each other. How about TUS-ABQ?

There is one major error in this comment. Medical Hypotheses is not “respectable” at least not among scientific researchers. Until 2010 papers were accepted without any peer review. This lead it to publish a lot of complete bunk pushed by both maverick scientists, but also by a lot of non-scientists.

It went from being largely ignored as a dumping ground of untenable hypotheses (there is a rather interesting book that collects together 100 of the papers under the heading Death can be Cured) to fame when it accepted two papers that claimed HIV did not cause AIDS.

In addition to the state medical board being courageous enough* to take action against antivax docs handing out phony medical exemptions, the news media need to keep track of communities whose schools continue to have high opt-out rates, and to look at which docs are making that possible.

Perhaps the Washington, DC metro area extends through several state borders!

It does. There is a commuter rail line between Union Station and Martinsburg, WV. But northeastern states tend to be small, so Martinsburg to DC is less than a two hour drive in light traffic.

LinkedIn sometimes gets more than a little generous with its definition of metro areas. It considers large parts of New Hampshire to be part of metro Boston. To be fair, some New Hampshire counties (including the one where I live) are officially considered part of metro Boston, and parts of five states (MA, NH, RI, CT, ME) are within 60 miles of downtown Boston. But Hanover, NH, is about 120 miles north of Boston, and I have seen it described on LinkedIn as being part of metro Boston.

A city confusion story of my own: Once I was checking in at LAX to fly back to Manchester, the closest major airport to where I live. The agent asked to see my passport, because she assumed I meant the one in England, not the one in New Hampshire. I’ve also had my checked baggage misdirected to Harrisburg, because the airport code for that city (MDT) differs by one letter from that of Manchester (MHT). In the 1990s, United Airlines had a habit of confusing those two airports.

She managed to get her flight switched at the last second, but I joked that we were lucky she picked the Portland on the right side of the country.

In 1985 college student Michael Lewis was trying to get a connecting flight home to Oakland, CA. at LA airport. He heard a PA boarding announcement for Oakland, asked if this was the flight to Oakland, and when told yes boarded the plane.

He realized about an hour into the flight that something wasn’t quite right, and that all the cabin personel had funny accents. Turns out he’d boarded an Air New Zealand flight to Auckland, not Oakland.

In 1985 college student Michael Lewis was trying to get a connecting flight home to Oakland, CA. at LA airport. He heard a PA boarding announcement for Oakland, asked if this was the flight to Oakland, and when told yes boarded the plane.

[email protected]: I think you misunderstood Narad. His point was that you can (or used to be able to; like him, I haven’t checked in a while) book a flight between PDX and SEA. A few years ago I was routed BOS-PDX-SEA on a west coast trip. It’s not the shortest segment I have encountered: I think you can still fly BOS-PWM (about a two hour drive in light traffic), and I was once on a BOS-MHT flight (that’s about a one-hour drive, which is why that route isn’t operated anymore). Three hours is short enough that it makes little sense for people with driver licenses to fly rather than drive, but long enough that it isn’t completely ridiculous.

Congratulations to California, and may the rest of the United States follow.

Re. Hellanthus @ 9:

Aliens and chemtrails (and ghosts, oh my!): Splendid idea! Do it!

Someone here should make this poster:

Use the existing poster, and add two more faces. One, Doctor Strangelove (underline ‘Doctor’). Two, a classic extraterrestrial, with antennae, and a goofy hippy space alien name or just ‘Space Brother.’

Then add to the list below: ‘Poisoning you from the sky!’ and ‘Probes, implanted devices, and erased memories!’

Then put the poster in circulation in a place that makes it appear to have come from the anti-vaxxers, and watch (some of) them swallow it like tea & biscuits and poop it out all over the internet.

Eric Lund: “[email protected]: I think you misunderstood Narad. His point was that you can (or used to be able to; like him, I haven’t checked in a while) book a flight between PDX and SEA”

Well, of course you can. I don’t understand why it is special. There are several Horizon flights per day, it takes about a half hour, not counting the checking in at the airport and getting through TSA.

Personally I prefer taking one of the three or four trains between them.

And I often misunderstand Narad. The series of airport codes are common for they flight progress/connections, it really has nothing to do with how a metro area is defined.

“Even more insulting, he seriously argues that the reason for the Fugitive Slave Act was that slave owners couldn’t let it go because the existence of fugitive slaves “drove them crazy” when the motivation was more financial.”

No, I think Heckenlively is right about the motivations of the southern slave owners. Slavery was a social system as well as an economic one. Basically, slavery underlied all of southern life, and to have slaves escaping to freedom, and then telling the truth about slavery, must have galled southern plantation owners.

That’s the frustrating thing about denialists like Heckenlively. They can be completely normal and factually correct on some issues (in this case, the role of the fugitive slave act), but they are also completely unhinged about whatever subject they happen to be in denial about (in this case, vaccines being perfectly safe).

Living as I do in central Illinois, I warn visitors who are not from the Midwest about flying into Bloomington IL as opposed to Bloomington, IN.

When I was in graduate school I had an old military buddy who was coming to see me and wound up in the other one.

Things like that, even happen in The Netherlands. I live in Rijswijk, near The Hague, but there are also two other places with the same name and some people who should come to install central heating, ended up in the wrong Rijswijk.

Yah, I used to do that one a fair amount. Usually packed on Friday nights, free drinks (“better take two, sweetie!”). There are a lot of short DTW flights on full-sized jets, as well, and there used to be OAK–SFO.

Dr. Jay Gordon is already blogging about the looseness of medical exemption criteria. It would appear that he is already indicating to anti-vaxers that he will freely give out “medical exemptions” based on his own, individual criteria. He is exploiting the signing statement by Governor Brown by giving it a very loose interpretation.

Things like that, even happen in The Netherlands. I live in Rijswijk, near The Hague, but there are also two other places with the same name and some people who should come to install central heating, ended up in the wrong Rijswijk.

This reminds me of a time when I was in Krakow, and my friend Grzesiek and I went to visit his friend Paulina, who was apartment-sitting for her sister waaaay out in the burbs (“behind the a$$ of Krakow” is the local expression.) We were hanging out on the deck and generally enjoying ourselves, but at some point we ran out of beer. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to buy beer, at least within reasonable walking distance. So, this being the 21st century, I mentioned that I’d seen ads for places in Kraktown that would deliver booze if you ordered over the Internet.

So we tried it, we waited around, etc. Finally we get a call from the guy, and G. and I go downstairs and down the long driveway – no car in sight. We turn back and see Paulina, doubled over in laughter, run back and ask her what the deal is, and she explains to us that the guy had gone to the exact address we gave him – in Warsaw.

I mean, you can possibly SEE OAK from SFO..
-btw- I’ve never been in OAK but have been in fabulous Oaktown itself
( but not to attend an hiv/aids denialist convention that occurred there but because my companion wanted to photograph some architecture – NOT the Mormon Temple in the hills. By BART yet. Lots of fun)

There are a few antivaxxers who are both right wing authoritarian followers (which seems very reasonable for this brand of crazy) But are also GUN NUTS. There’s one post I recall where the personal stated if anyone tried to force them to vaccinate their children they would be executing their “2nd amendment rights.”

Never mind that this person completely lacks any understanding of the whole “for the purposes of keeping a militia” concept of the 2nd amendment. The entire gun-nut crowd has basically re-interpreted the constitution on their own, and . now they can officially have as many assault rifles and ridiculously large ammo caches as they want, “because constitution.” And there are lots of tea party and repugnican politicians out there who buy into and support this line of “reasoning” all the way (not to mention the NRA).**

It’s these extreme crazies that I fear the most. They’re the same ones that will kill doctors that perform abortions, or shoot up a church on sunday morning.

And the one thing about guns that is absolutely undeniably true: the ones who want the guns the most are the same ones the rest of us would least like to have the guns (and for good reason).

The gun issue is just one of the pet topics that “personal freedom” advocates always seem to fall to the same side on. Whenever I hear someone barking on about “freedom” or “personal choice” I reach for the pepto-bismol, because we’re about to be graced with a load of shite so large it’ll take a couple of semis to bring it into focus.

Generally these “freedom” fighters are fighting for their own personal freedom to be complete douchebags, even when that infringes on the rights of others (lesser peoples, obviously, not “good white folk”). You see it all the time in the arguments of gay-haters, always trying to find some moral justification using “freedom” or “religious freedom” and “personal choice” to justify their discriminating against another group of people (typically gays or minorities).

Antivaxxers also treat their children with this kind of contempt, but use different language and psychological mechanisms to justify it. They believe their “right” to “choice” extends through their children, and that their children should not be mandated to do anything by the state “because freedom” or whatever. They are actually fighting to keep their own personal right to selfishness, even at the expense of others. While a child should have the right to receive life-saving medical interventions like vaccines, the child’s rights are not the main issue because it’s not the child who is on their minds, it is themselves. These people fight for their own right to selfishly do what they want, even if it defies all sense and reason, and even if their children have to pay a terrible price for it (which some do, like the ones who get easily preventable contagious diseases like measles).

So when your selfishness translates into your kids having necessary and needed medical care denied them (i.e. getting vaccinated), in my mind, that makes you a child-abuser. Your selfish focus on your own “Rights” has resulted in your child being denied necessary and needed medical treatment and healthcare. There is no religious or “personal freedom” justification, it’s just you being selfish, and it’s abusive to your children, and you should be arrested for it.

**my favorite was a sign on a gun shop that said “hurry up and get your guns before Obama takes them away.” For real, not kidding. Nevermind that the only gun legislation that’s actually done anything in his two terms is the Brady Bill EXPIRING. Repugnicans and the NRA have blocked everything, especially the most reasonable stuff, because right wing gun nuts are unreasonable and selfish

@JP
My husband dearest once managed to call a Warsaw taxi number in Katowice. He gave the street name, the number, and said “You know, at the University building”. And then he heard “But there is no university on this street!”

Ah, now I’m missing Poland. 🙂 (I’ll probably spend a month or two there on the tail end of a trip to Ukraine this fall, which will be nice.)

In all fairness to us, the liquor store we tried to order from had stores in Krakow, and I don’t recall that their website mentioned that they were based in Warsaw mainly, and it didn’t occur to us to include the city in the address when we were ordering…

MILL VALLEY, CA – Physicians Opposed to California Senate Bill 277 strongly oppose the proposed California legislation that unnecessarily removes all philosophical and religious exemptions from school vaccination requirements. Two hundred physicians in California and other states call for a “no vote.”

Medicine needs to stand up for itself. We feel a strong sense of responsibility toward the people who trust us to care for themselves and their families, and especially toward infants and children who are among the most vulnerable members of our society. Lawmakers should not legislate medicine; it is outside the scope of their responsibilities, regardless of professional training. The small number who are medical doctors were not elected to legislate medicine on behalf of us all.

SB 277 promotes one-size-fits-all medical treatment and inappropriately interferes with a physician’s ability to educate, treat, and care for patients. Implementation of the proposed law will make it nearly impossible for doctors to deliver individualized vaccine recommendations based on the assessment of a valid medical need and good medical evidence.

SB 277 is not needed. The childhood vaccine program in California is working well. There is an adequate system in place and no imminent or anticipated public health emergency on the horizon. The number of personal belief exemptions is on the decline, with a 19% reduction in the number of parents requesting a personal belief exemption (PBE) over the past two years. Vaccination coverage is at or near all-time high levels (California Department of Public Health, August 2014).

Effective January 1, 2014, following the enactment of AB 2109, California parents are required to obtain a doctor’s signature prior to obtaining an exemption. AB 2109 ensures that parents who exercise their right to take a PBE are making a conscious and informed decision Today, only 2.54% of kindergarten students in California have PBEs on file with their schools, and most of these students receive vaccines. The CDC reports that over 99% of all children nationwide are vaccinated and 90-95% are fully vaccinated.

Lindy Woodard, MD, integrative pediatrician, states, “We believe SB277 is an extreme bill that would perpetuate a climate of fear and division, and does not respond to the actual needs of our physician and patient communities.”

The physicians opposing SB 277 call for adoption of the following urgent measures:

IDENTIFICATION OF VULNERABLE POPULATIONS. There must be continued development of meaningful testing protocols and exclusion criteria to assist doctors in identifying, in advance, those children who do not benefit from vaccination.

SPREADING OUT THE ADMINISTRATION OF VACCINES. If vaccines are to be given, we advocate the administration of fewer vaccines at any given office visit. Clinicians must be able to provide this option to children to reduce the incidence of adverse events as a result of vaccine additives and preservative components given simultaneously or concurrently.

AVAILABILITY OF SINGLE VACCINE PREPARATIONS. Physicians must have the flexibility and discretion to recommend individual, monovalent vaccines instead of combination vaccines. If a child only needs a measles vaccine, for example, based on titers or state requirements, why should she be required to receive other unneeded shots? Combination vaccines have a higher rate of reactogenicity (adverse events) and represent a greater share of compensated claims in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. It is not possible to administer an individual measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, pertussis, or tetanus vaccine separately. These vaccines are only available in the U.S. as combination MMR and DTaP shots.

The physician-patient relationship is sacred. It is based on trust and confidence that doctors will make recommendations based solely on the patient’s best interests. The decision, however, always belongs to the patient. Coercive, one-size-fits-all medicine is abhorrent in a free and democratic society. It violates the oath that clinicians have taken to do no harm and runs counter to the international human rights standard affirmed in theUniversal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights adopted by over 190 member countries of UNESCO in 2005:

Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be express and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice. [Article 6]

We oppose SB 277 and similar bills in other states that seek to remove, or effectively remove, the rights of individuals to make their own health care decisions. This is not the kind of medicine that we want to give our patients, nor is it the kind of medicine that we want for ourselves and our families.

Looks like there will be no shortage of MDs and DOs willing to write permanent medical exemptions.

Frankly this doesn’t bother me very much. It will be easy to spot the “PME mills” and the physicians can then be appropriately disciplined by the authorities.

Such a strategy was taken by the organization through which Canary Party coordinates its activities relevant to SB277 in California: the “California Coalition for Health Choice” (CCHC). While trying to do damage control for Canary Party on Facebook threads, Canary Party’s State Director Sylvia Pimentel only revealed more negative information about her organization. Pimentel said she, Rebecca Estepp, Jude Tovatt, Dawn Winkler and Laura Hayes comprised the Canary Party leadership within CCHC that had input on the fight against the bill, despite previously admitting: “Laura and Dawn left the coalition a few weeks ago because they didn’t like the ‘middle of the road’ strategy that CCHC was morphing into.”

Pimentel further admitted that CCHC members were afraid of their own cause, “Some members were gun-shy about being publicly quoted because of possible push-back in their careers or private life for being ‘anti-vaccine’.” Moreover, one of Canary Party’s California leaders promoted vaccination. Rebecca Estepp – director of communications for CCHC – drew criticism for advocating “moderation” and promoting vaccination last year. Such an approach inherently conflicts with raising awareness of vaccine dangers.

Germany, too. A US-based scientist I know was once in Munich and wanted to travel from there to a small town called Lindau, which is near Göttingen. So he bought a train ticket from Munich to Lindau. Luckily, someone pointed out to him that the train would have taken him to the Lindau near the Austrian border, several hundred kilometers south of his intended destination.

I see these 200 physicians stick to the “too many too soon” school of thought.

Combination vaccines have a higher rate of reactogenicity (adverse events) and represent a greater share of compensated claims in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. It is not possible to administer an individual measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, pertussis, or tetanus vaccine separately.

I wonder if the “greater share” of claims related to combination vaccines may be related to the non-existence of individual vaccines, as stated in the later part of the pamphlet. If they don’t exist, they cannot cause side effects…

Not only is PDX-SEA a valid routing, the flight search engines keep offering it to me when I ask for flights to/from Boston or New York. So far I haven’t accepted, because I can get a nonstop on SEA-BOS, SEA-EWR, or SEA-JFK, but if going via Portland was significantly cheaper I’d do it.

I wound up taking that trip once. Also from Washington National to Dulles.

I don’t recall all of the details, as it was more than 30 years ago and I was traveling quite a bit. The SFO OAK (or maybe the other way around) was probably related to traveling to see my parents and I was looking for a flight that would minimize their exposure to rush hour traffic. The DCA to IAD was a screw up by some Bozo in Transportation and a clueless Trip Leader.

One of the funny things about that SEA–MDW (now that’s it coming back to me) four-segment gig was that I had the same crew for the last three legs. The pilot’s near-spit-take when he saw me waiting to board the final trip from MEM almost made me feel bad, but I’ll chalk that up to exhaustion.

At least the FAs knew my drink request (black coffee with a Bloody Mary mix on the side) well by the end.

The initial TAs at MDW thought it was hilarious, though. Only one missed connection in the bunch, in IND, which I think put me on a widebody reroute through DTW. No idea what that thing was doing there.

But if one is going to mention PWM, it’s a dandy little airport, even if the local legend that it can land and take off a mamesh “Air Force 1” (747) is highly unlikely.*

On airline travel, I have done SYD-NRA-GFF several times (you may need to look some of those up). The last leg you can drive in less than an hour and takes less than 20 minutes to fly. So you fly pretty close to the ground.

It is fabulous on a warm sunny day, unless you suffer from motion sickness. It is like riding a little bouncy rollercoaster.

^ Which is to say that ginger ale is the only non-alcoholic beverage that should be drunk in the skies*; alcoholic beverages, of course, take precedence. If the beer is free, that is of course the correct choice.

*Or coffee by itself, maybe. I mean, Jeezus, what is your stomach lining made of?

Bear in mind that this had started quite a while earlier with a red-eye SEA–MSP. At some point, it’s just caffeine + foodlike beverage and the sodium be damned.

Although I stuck with the combination on a recent Orlando RT. Bloody Mary mix is one of those things that the FAs don’t seem to mind providing a whole can of in the slightest – which I take to mean that it’s unlikely the cart’s going to have to return to the galley.

I’ve only taken Southwest once, and those freaks only had mini-cans of Mr. & Mrs. “T.”

Actually, I don’t understand the whole hot coffee/ tea on planes anyway when bouncing around and it’s usually too hot and dry. I have never drank alcohol on planes .I might try a white wine spritzer though. Seltzer, mineral water, an occasional cranberry juice is alright.

Oh and -btw- in tribute to lilady- altho’ it isn’t her usual late night …

there are many Eastern European shops in my area which feature delicacies both interesting and disgusting. The Russians have a shop that sells both fresh fruit, fermented dairy products and caviar- when I sold properties I owned I went in and bought some caviar of course. The Polish have deli-style shops that sell many pickled things in jars as well as sausages which I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot…. BUT very attractive, tiny packaged wafers and cakes. Those were worthwhile.

To all the antivaxxers out, I just want to say this. When the next pandemic (say H5N1 Infuuenza) hits (and it will), with a mortality rate of 1 in 3, I hope that all the antivaxxers will have to go to the back of the line when the vaccine demand outstrips the vaccine supply (and it will!). That way, there will be more vaccine available for me and my family and others who believe in vaccines. I hope the government makes it a requirement to show that someone has been immunized. No childhood vaccines. no life saving pandemic vaccine.

“Actually, I don’t understand the whole hot coffee/ tea on planes anyway when bouncing around and it’s usually too hot and dry.”

Back in mid-career I often flew between adjacent cities with very brief flights. You had to get up early, rush to airport and hope you got to your downtown destination for the start of the business day. There was no time for coffee in this rush. Flight attendants limbered up pre-takeoff to prepare for the 5 minute sprint down the aisles to sate everyone’s caffeine craving before landing. That’s all it was about, a vile lukewarm concoction to prevent caffeine withdrawal. It was neither relaxing nor pleasurable for everyone involved, just necessary.

Once again, we called it a long time ago, that eventually “The Kid’s” handlers over at AoA would lose control of him…..seems they were perfectly fine with his baseless accusations when they were directed at their enemies, but when the tables are turned, they can’t take the heat.

[…] the wake of the passage of SB 277 into law in California, the antivaccine contingent went full mental jacket. SB 277, as you might recall, eliminates non-medical exemptions (i.e., religious and personal […]

there are many Eastern European shops in my area which feature delicacies both interesting and disgusting. The Russians have a shop that sells both fresh fruit, fermented dairy products and caviar- when I sold properties I owned I went in and bought some caviar of course.

If you have a chance, you actually should go in and get some caviar – the krasnaia ikra (red caviar) is usually a bit of a splurge, but not even out of my (grad student) price range. Red caviar on white bread with butter – really, you should try it, it’s great. I’ve actually never had the black caviar myself – it’s a lot more expensive.

Real Russian (actually, Eastern European in general) kefir is something that should be sampled, too. I like it a lot; it’s more sour than yogurt, and runny, and kind of slightly effervescent. I know, it sounds weird, and maybe it’s an acquired taste, but I love the stuff. The American just seems like runny American yogurt to me, and they usually give it some stupid flavor. (Adding preserves for flavoring to Russian kefir is acceptable, though.)

The Polish have deli-style shops that sell many pickled things in jars as well as sausages which I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot…. BUT very attractive, tiny packaged wafers and cakes. Those were worthwhile.

Oh, Diane, you’re missing out on those sausages – the Poles do them well, almost as well as the Czechs. (It is true that Czech sausages and beer are better than Polish – I pretty much lived on beer and sausage when I was in Prague. Poles do certain things better than the Czechs, though, like soups, pickles, and, yes, sweets. You really gotta try chruściki some time.)

Whoops! I suppose maybe it’s because my friend Diane was on my mind. Speaking of Diane, there was another Diane to whom I was introduced at a party, and I kept calling her Nadine instead of Diane – she’s the only Diane that’s ever happened with, oddly enough. It’s like my brain had just decided that was the right order for the letters or something.

[…] introduced into the California legislature for consideration, much less passed by both chambers and signed into law by the governor. SB 277 is now the law of the land and has eliminated non-medical exemptions to school vaccine […]

@Chris and ken-
If you trace through the Clallam county cases going all the way back through February, there were a couple of un-vaccinated kids in the same family, followed by an “older family member” (context implies their dad) who had had the single less-effective dose in the 70s and never got the recommended second dose later. This “older family member” is the one the immunosuppressed woman was exposed to. If those earlier cases had been appropriately vaccinated, this wouldn’t have happened.

Oh, it’s Disqus, which I have walled off from the usual browser. (I thought he had deactivated comments at ET.)

He did, but he lifted the ban a couple days later. I suspect he received a nasty-gram from ET saying ‘No comments, no page views; no page views, we can’t sell ads; we can’t sell ads, we won’t mirror your blog’.